Maps in iOS 7 will gain a full screen mode that emphasizes how Apple's 3D Flyover imagery is much easier to navigate, more detailed and significantly more up-to-date than even the desktop 3D offerings of leading map vendors Google and Nokia, let alone their mobile app offerings.

In full screen mode, iOS 7 Maps presents a view on iPhone 5 that's nearly as expansive and detailed as an iPad today

Apple Maps takes iOS from trailing to leading in 3D

At Apple's introduction of iOS 6 last fall, iOS 5 Maps had been serving up bitmapped tiles from Google, which supplied only a flat, 2D representation of the massing of modeled buildings (below left).

iOS 5 Google Maps vs Android Google Maps

Google's own Maps+Navigation app for Android (above right) presented the same building models with the added ability to freely rotate the map, allowing users to see the shape of landmark towers from multiple angles and discern the accurate relationship of buildings and the roads around them.

Apple 2D & 3D Standard Maps

While Apple also added 3D building massing models of its own to iOS Maps in Standard mode (above), it additionally enabled users to take Satellite maps into the modeled 3D perspective mode Apple referred to as Flyover (below).

Apple 2D & 3D Satellite Maps

Flyover gave Apple's new iOS Maps a compelling alternative to the Google Street View feature it was missing (the replication of which would be both a difficultly complicated and expensively inefficient task for Apple to attempt).

It also helped to make up for Apple Maps' other shortcomings, including having far fewer and often less sophisticated 3D building models (visible above in the Time Warner Center building, opposite Central Park in New York City; the latest Google Maps for iOS don't actually show the building in favor of instead presenting an indoor mall map, another feature Apple doesn't yet match).

Google Maps 2D & 3D Standard Maps

Flyover's alternative representation provides an additional sanity check for users trying to orient themselves on the map, and represents a feature that's still missing from even the new Google Maps for iOS.

When Google Maps' satellite imagery is taken into perspective (above), it simply appears as a flat, confusing distortion of the overhead view.

Google Maps 2D & 3D Satellite Maps

To see realistic models, users have to leave Google Maps and launch Google Earth (below right), which lacks the same easy navigation controls and the traffic and directions of an actual mapping app.

Apple Flyover vs Google Earth

Details in Flyover (above left) appear less sharply distinct in this screen shot, but in actual use it is far easier to position and read than Google Earth, and consumes a lot less memory. Google Earth frequently complains of running out of memory in actual use, and is both plodding and laggy.

Nokia 3D Maps via C3

C3 had demonstrated its technology at CES 2011 (shown in the video below), eliciting the description of it being a "Google Maps on steroids."

Shortly afterward in April 2011, Nokia released a preview of its work in partnership with C3 to develop 3D Maps imagery for its web-based Ovi Maps, now branded as Nokia HERE.

Nokia stated at that time that C3's 3D mapping "uses modern camera equipment to capture as many as one image per second of the same object from up to 100 different angles. The images are then used to automatically reproduce the shape of the objects with very high accuracy. After that, an image processing software automatically drapes each shape with the texture chosen from the pictures of each object.

"The same process is being applied for all objects  buildings, houses, trees, and hills  the result is a seamless canvas of 3D-data where the resolution (8 to 12 centimeters per pixel) and quality is consistent over the entire model. This is the secret to C3 maps realistic look compared to competitors hand-made and cartoonish appearance."

Nokia said C3 had finished mapping parts of 20 different major cities in Europe and North America, promising more to come. However, Apple's acquisition of C3 has left Nokia with 3D imagery limited to just 25 cities, including parts of New York City (below).

Nokia 3D Maps

Even within the limited 3D Maps Nokia offers, imagery appears to be considerably less detailed and often much older than those available through Apple Maps, and is also more difficult to position and navigate (although not as bad as Google Earth).

Nokia's 3D Maps also require a desktop web browser with support for WebGL, so they won't work on iOS devices. Nokia's HERE app for iOS doesn't include support for the company's 3D Maps either.

This is all very interesting and shows that Apple have done way better than many of us imagined. Given that though, a missing point from this article, and it's a fundamental one, is that Flyover covers a tiny percentage of the area covered by Google Street View. For those of us who a) Don't live in the USA and b) Don't live in, or plan to travel to, a city then Street View wins every time.

Not a 3D issue, but one annoying feature of Apple Maps is that it doesn't tell you where you are in some places unless you drop a pin. The village in which I live has "no name" in Apple Maps, though it does in Google's. I have to drop a pin to find the name of the village. This even happens in some sizeable towns near me and that makes it quite hard to navigate around a map when you don't actually know the towns that you can see displayed.

The 3D Hoover dam image is the perfect litmus test to portray the insane discrepency between the coverage of Apple and Google products. The distorted image was used to headline pretty much every single negative Maps article, I must have seen it posted thousands of times, accompanied with mockery and denigration. The image was supposed to show just show shitty Apple maps was. Every single fandroid and apple hater reposted it with glee, over and over again, and used it to troll about how bad the product was. Major news sites such as CNN also used it, feigning shock and contempt.

Meanwhile, Google has had the SAME image with pretty much the EXACT SAME distortions- on a product they've been working on for 7 years. Noone ever noticed, and the ones who did didn't give a shit. Even now, almost a year after Apple maps was released and this imagery was mocked, Google STILL hasn't fixed theirs, and again- noone gives a shit or cares, especially Google cheerleaders. Meanwhile, Apple's version looks perfect, with an insane level of detail.

This 1:1 comparison is pretty rock-solid evidence for how intellectually dishonest critisism against Apple tends to be, as well as the different standard they're held at, even by people who claim to despise the company. Its incredibly sad and childish.

The 3D view is nice for showing off, but it really doesn't have the utility of street level photos. For example, often when I am taking a road trip, I will "drive" the route near the final destination inside of street view in order to visually memorize the landmarks I need to recognize.

Also, Google Earth is a separate product, and much more enterprise driven, it has substantially larger datasets than the consumer maps with lots more data overlay layers (KML support), even support for the Moon, Mars, and Sky Maps.

The real future of Google Maps is shown in the current Web version which offers integrated 2D, Satellite, 3D, Street View, Photo Tours, Photo Spheres, Transit, and Indoor Maps. I would expect a future version of Google Maps for Mobile to include integrated 3D, but it is probably not a priority them right now, because honestly, 3D is mostly bells and whistles. It chews up much more CPU/GPU/memory, storage, and network bandwidth and offers very little over 2D or 2D projective maps.

Remember when "Design is not about how it looks, but how it works?" Well, 3D maps, no matter how fancy they look, are less useful than 2D or first-person perspective.

What Apple ought to worry about is Google doing Photogrammetry on Street View level data to extract true 3D Street Views. This would make Street View work almost like a 3D game, provide data for augmented reality, and is not something that Apple can easily duplicate (unlike 3D mapping cities, which you can do by renting overflights with special cameras that do thousands of square miles at a time) without setting up its own fleet of cars to drive through the world's cities.

This 1:1 comparison is pretty rock-solid evidence for how intellectually dishonest critisism against Apple tends to be, as well as the different standard they're held at, even by people who claim to despise the company. Its incredibly sad and childish.

I think the criticism against Apple for warped 3D is unfair. It's a standard artifact of Photogrammetry and algorithmic techniques to detect things like bridges, trees, and other structures only goes so far and needs to be aided by human labor. The world is very large, so it cannot be expected that all of these would be fixed in short order.

On the other hand, Apple attracted some of the criticism on itself by focusing so much on the 3D aspect. It's a style-over-substance gimmick, not a competitive differentiator. Apple has other things to fix, like their POI search is inferior to Google, especially internationally. The basic function of maps is search + directions. You have to nail those first before you can screw around with fancy flyovers. IMHO, Apple thought they had a knockout punch with Flyovers to differentiate against Google Maps, the reality was, Google had already obviously been working on photogrammetry flyovers (it was not a "reaction" to IOS Maps, they had to have started years prior, because such efforts require specialized camera designs and aircraft mounts, flight plans and government permissions, months of overflights, and more months of processing and massaging datasets), which is why they beat Apple to the punch by showing off Google Earth flyovers before iOS Maps were shown.

Whoever was in charge of Apple Maps simply focused on the wrong thing. It's like if Apple created a Web Search Engine, and spent all their effort on fancy animated renderings of search results looking like some hollywood Minority Report flick, and no effort on having a complete, fresh, web index, with good ranking algorithms.

Flyover gave Apple's new iOS Maps a compelling alternative to the Google Street View feature it was missing (the replication of which would be both a difficultly complicated and expensively inefficient task for Apple to attempt).

Flyover really isn't a compelling alternative to Street View, at least not where I live. Flyover is interesting and mildly entertaining but it's not going to help me locate a hard-to-find business. At the moment, Flyover is a gimmick to most users whereas Street View is genuinely useful. What practical day-to-day use-case does Flyover have? I've yet to hear one despite asking on AI before. Perhaps one will be found once the technology improves?

With all those 3D views, if you are not living in the US or other prominent parts of the world, you will find Google Maps is far better. Apple Maps have so many errors that it is unusable in my city. Places are wrongly labeled, names are misspelled, POIs are misplaced. Google, on the other hand, is 90% of the time accurate.

Yes, Apple started almost a decade after Google but can Apple afford a decade to catch up? I think not. They need to eliminate these kind of errors before concentrating on these fancy 3D veiws. I enjoyed the Flyovers for 3 days but then went back to Googles outdated looking but working Maps. Off course, design is important but if it is not accurate, people are not gonna use it. What good is a beautiful looking building if it is not properly marked? You wanted to go to Pizza Hut but after reaching there you realize it is KFC. Yes, it is true.

I reported several errors just after upgrading to iOS 6 but they are still not corrected. I remember someone arguing that Apple received millions reports a day. But that cant be an excuse for a company which have more cash than most countries. Why cant Apple or partner maps ompanies employ volunteers to correct issue like the above? I am willing to correct at least 30/40 entries a day. I am sure I am not the only one and someday you will join us. That should improve Maps tremendously in a very short time.

which is why they beat Apple to the punch by showing off Google Earth flyovers before iOS Maps were shown.

They beat Apple to the punch by childishly scrambled everything to held the presenatation just a week before Apple's. LOL. See, at least they were right because one fool was already fallen for their tactic.